Tag: NHS

325: you should see the other guy

AKA: Pavement 1, Kirsty 0

Last week, as I was waiting for a cab for some members of our Community Access Panel, they pointed out to me that the kerb on the vehicle access to the Centre was quite high and we might want to think about painting it to warn people not to trip over it. I made a note of this, of course, and mentioned it in passing to our facilities manager.

This week, as I was leaving the celebration event on Wednesday evening (having had one soft drink and a biscuit or two) I tripped over it and landed like a felled tree on the pavement. A cyclist swerved off the road and informed me that I was bleeding before swerving off again. Fortunately I was outside work so I staggered back in and got myself mopped up, and they put me in a cab to the station as at that point it looked as if I had a mouse on my brow and a couple of small grazes.

Onto the tube I hopped, having waited for some time for a train. With no mirror handy I had no idea what I looked like. The friend I’d been chatting to when I faceplanted had made me promise to phone Miriam and Jill and get picked up from Epping station. When Miriam picked me up she took one look at me and marched me off to a nurse colleague, who took another look and sent me off to A&E.

On the way Miriam called at Lidl and bought me a bag of frozen peas, as well as a QP with cheese from the McDonalds next door as I hadn’t eaten for about eight hours. The peas are the best vegetable anyone’s bought me since Kerry turned up in 2006 with a Savoy cabbage when I had mastitis. They lasted four hours before becoming mushy peas, which then defrosted on my top.

By this point I had double vision, was feeling quite queasy as I hadn’t eaten, and words like ‘head injury’ and ‘concussion’ were being bandied about the place. A&E at 8pm on a Wednesday was clearly the cool place to be as it was absolutely packed. I had my temperature and blood pressure taken, and about 10.30pm the clinical streamer saw me and packed me off to the next waiting room where I sat from then until 9am the following day when I was actually seen by a doctor.

When we arrived in the second waiting room the waiting time was 7 hours and there were 51 patients. At 1am a nurse came round with blankets for everyone, which were much needed, and a coffee trolley was left at some point, When the painkillers kicked in I dozed off for a bit but the situation wasn’t ideal. One person had been there since 9am the previous morning in the same chair. The nurses’ station wasn’t able to tell you anything other than how many people were ahead of you (15, at 4am when I asked)

At 4am when they updated the board there were 44 patients and 10 hour wait. At 9am there were 30 patients and a 12 hour wait. There is probably a formula for this in a GCSE syllabus somewhere, but it didn’t make a lot of sense to me.

In waiting room 3 I was reunited with some of the people who’d been in A&E the previous evening but who had at least seen a doctor. The doctor did some eye checks on me and tapped my face, took a photo and went off for some advice. A while later she came back and sent me for an x-ray in case I’d broken anything. I had an x-ray which wasn’t clear enough to be sure, so I had a CT scan which showed I’d managed to fracture my lower orbit. Another doctor said she’d go and talk to another team and she’d come back to me. At 3pm I was finally told I could go home and the hospital would be in touch with an outpatients appointment. I wandered over to Geek Retreat via Primark, where I bought two pairs of very large sunglasses. Miriam retrieved me, informed me that I was staying at her house in a proper bed for a while, and took me home. Jill brought me flowers and chocolates in the evening – unnecessary but lovely!

On Friday morning I was called back into hospital to see the opthalmology team (another 5 hours of waiting around) and on Monday I’m seeing the maxillofacial team to assess whether they need to do anything. The swelling has subsided and I can see out of both eyes again which is nice!

Of course, the Centre opened on Friday and after all the preparations….I missed it. Still, I would have scared people off with my rainbow eye! Irish sister sent me some very tasteful eyepatches…thanks Steph….

So that’s been my week. Not sure what this week will look like – can I realistically go and do a storytelling session for small people on Wednesday or will the sight of my eye scare them, or host the freelancer social? No swimming, no flying, no blowing my nose – slightly worried about the underground too, of course. Who knew a faceplant would raise so many questions?

Watch this face…no, space….

Kirsty x

75: delays to normal service continue

Ten years ago, on a bank holiday weekend much like this one, I came downstairs to find a message from London sister on the answerphone, left in the early hours of the morning: my brother-in-law had had a massive heart attack and they didn’t know if he was going to make it. I wandered back upstairs and told my beloved, who said – like we all did – ‘are you sure? what? that can’t be right’, or words to that effect. But he’s really fit and healthy, he’s only 36. That sort of thing. He had an undetected heart condition, apparently: scanning young adults is not routine, so it was never picked up. It’s the same thing that caused footballers like Fabrice Muamba and Christian Eriksen to collapse on field.

They had been out running and out of the blue he had dropped. She did CPR and with the help of a passer by – as she didn’t have her phone on her – had called the ambulance and he’d been raced off to hospital where they operated. He’d been half an hour without a heartbeat and was given a 10% chance of making it through the next 24 hours. I still go cold thinking about it now.

London sister and her husband met at school when they were 11, and did the whole playground ‘going out’ thing, so he’d been in our lives for 25 years at that point. They broke up, as you do when you’re 11, and got back together on my 20th birthday (which made remembering stuff a lot easier). He was a hugely talented guitarist, a sound engineer who had worked on some great albums with some very big names, a guitar teacher, a rock to the whole family when our Grandad Bill passed away. He and I hadn’t always got on, but I love him dearly.

They married in 2005, in a joyful ceremony (I’m not sure I’ve ever seen another bride turn round and give the entire congregation a thumbs up and a massive grin when the vows were said) with a reception where their first dance was to ‘If I had a million dollars’ by the Bare-Naked Ladies.

High Beech, 2011 – pre-cardiac arrest. Thing 1 nicking her aunty’s water

Things 1 and 2 adore their uncle (and aunty, of course), and Thing 1 treated him as a giant climbing frame. Thing 2 didn’t like a lot of people but he was one of them. I don’t think that that she talked to him much, but she did at least acknowledge his existence which was rare. At five and rising three they didn’t understand what was happening, and Thing 3 was only seven months old at the time. I was due to go back to work a few days later, at the end of my maternity leave. I am not sure how much use I was back at work, but there we are.

Both London sister and my brother-in-law are, fortunately, stubborn types. He pulled through, and after several months in hospitals he came home. He had to learn to walk, talk and eat again, and both their lives have changed irrevocably. The long – and ongoing – journey they have been on since then is not my story to tell. Thing 3 never knew Uncle Mk1 as he was too young, but he adores Uncle Mk2 and treated him as a climbing frame in much the same way as his big sister did. He was a sturdy child, to say the least, and had to be reminded to be gentle at times.

Thing 3 and his beloved uncle and aunty

The swift work of my sister and the NHS meant that we still have my giant, grumpy, funny, beloved brother-in-law in our lives, and my sister still has her soulmate. They have raised thousands for C-R-Y (Cardiac Research in the Young) and Headway since then, and I am proud to have been a small part of that when we did a half marathon together. Well, together at least part of the way – she finished before I did!

Twelve people each week under the age of 35 die due to sudden cardiac arrest. If more of us knew how to do CPR – I have the vaguest idea, having last done first aid training when I was a student teacher in the mid-90s – then that number could probably be reduced. There are defibrillators all over the country now, but I am not sure I would know how to use one.

When I went back to work I asked our HR team about first aid training: no, I was told, it’s only for front of house staff. While I wasn’t working on the floors, I was delivering sessions in basement classrooms without a radio or a telephone, or on gallery, so I was working with the public. Still not good enough, I was told. This seemed shortsighted, but they wouldn’t budge.

If they can find the space in the school curriculum to teach financial literacy and ‘British values’ they can find a space to teach CPR: a half day out of the school year isn’t that much and it could – quite literally – save a life.

Normal service returns next week, honest.

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Mort / Interesting Times/Reaper Man – Terry Pratchett